EA Looked To Buy Mojang, No Sale

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EA CEO John Riccitiello recently met with Notch with (reportedly) a view to acquiring the Minecraft creating company, according to an interview with Develop. “EA came to see us,” says Notch. “I think they had plans, but picked up the vibe. Nothing’s been said since – it’s all very high politics,”

Notch has stated that EA made no direct offer, but that acquisitiveness makes sense, given Mr R’s history. But Mojang is basically not for sale, and frankly why would it be? Minecraft recently hit three million copies sold and Notch is richer than the rest of indie game dev put together. I think there’s a point where you can stop worrying about money, and Mr P has hit it: “I play their games, and they make great games, but we are too far from each other,” said Notch of EA. “They can make their games, and I’ll buy them. We’ll make ours, and they can buy them. Not the property – that’s ours. But they can play it like everyone else.”

That’s just the diplomatic way of saying, “Err, no. We are not for sale to your hideous Borg corporation, that would consume our natural resources and discard us like all of your other spent acquisitions.”

Well they seem to have stopped looking for new IPs and closed the less succceful ones. And then they’re trying to turn the more succeful into CoD (I’m looking at you DA2 and ME3). Way to go EA, way to go…

Really, EA is NOT a huge EVIL corporation. They may be huge, but they are certainly not evil. They might make a few decisions that we disagree with, but if they really were all in for the bottom line (cash) we would be seeing worse things. After all, EA isn’t a welfare project. Well, it might be, but not for the gamers. For the shareholders, I would say, rather.

Hi Squishpoke. Yeah I left Kotaku months ago and haven’t been back in a while. I’m spending most of my time on deanb’s Press X or Die forums, here, other odd sites; also doing some writing for gaming blogs. Been fun! Good to see ya!

Notch declined Valve and EA still thought they had a chance? FFS, EA, GET OVER YOURSELVES! God, damnit, I hate you! Mojang are indies for a reason, perhaps you’ve mistaken yourself regarding the term ‘indie’? REMOVE YOUR DAMN UGLY DESTRUCTIVE HANDS FROM MY MOST BELOVED INDIE DEVELOPERS! AND TAKE ORIGIN WITH YOU IN YOUR FALL!

Pretty sure EA’s shareholders would have forced them to at least try, considering how profitable Minecraft is. Considering the potential risk/reward of one-man indie games, producers in the industry must be paying a lot of attention now.

A similar article on Kotaku reported that Riccitiello was actually in Sweden to meet with DICE and dropped by for a lunch with Notch. Nothing about a merger was ever mentioned according to Notch, but somehow it has become newsworthy.

mmm, well, it’s a good sign I think that EA are looking to diversify away from the monolithic AAA business. They cop a lot of flack around here (and understandably so in most cases) but they do seem to be the most creative and forward-thinking of the big publishers these days.

I don’t think Notch is any better than EA, just far more agile. I thought Scrolls was going to have that dumb booster pack system and he was going to make people pay for the mod API. He changed quickly, but that’s easy to do when you’re in charge of a low double digit team.

slow news day? “something didnt happen to mojang!” i came here from the pcgamer site coz i was sick of hearing about this guy, is this really all the gaming world wants to talk about? this guy 24/7? ffs.

Well, something DID happen to Mojang. The CEO of one of the biggest companies in gaming paid Notch a visit, and presumably offered him lots and lots of money. Even if Notch turning down the offer isn’t newsworthy, the fact that EA was interested in acquiring Minecraft certainly is.

I completely disagree. Riccitiello has far too much of a piggy face to be attractive. Not that he’s fat, but his bone structure doesn’t do him any favours. Notch does err on the side of festively plump, but the shape of his face does him many more favours in that regard. Plus Notch’s beard just wins of the two. But John of Wolfire stomps over both of them with hearty vigour.

This just about sums up my feelings about the matter, too. EA have a vey chequered past, but I’m willing to cut them a little slack since they’ve obviously trying to change their ways a little in the last few years. They still have the potential to put out excellent games, so any sign that they’re looking in new directions is a good sign for the industry and for us peasants, too.

Wow! 3 mil copies for a game that isn’t finished yet. I had no idea it was that many. As for EA, they have published some great AAA (or should that be AA+ now?) titles. However, they do seem to take the shine from those they’ve consumed; Will Wright, Bioware etc…

Anyway, notch or no notch, EA are bound to find someone to knock up a Minecraft-a-like game (and every other major publisher no doubt), and it will no doubt be quite polished. As for whether it retains the openness of minecraft though is a different matter.

Dead Space is only an experiment if you consider ANY new IP to be an ‘experiment’; there was nothing risky or innovative in the setting or the game. I’m not saying it was bad, but it was just a mash-up of every existing sci-fi/horror trope.

And so it was foretold that Notch, standing over the corpse of EA, plucked out anything of worth and set it free. The origin o things was handed over to Sir Garriott, so that he might gather together his court and they may rise again like a star for one, last brilliant adventure. Bioware was instructed to drop that silly MMO and get back to what they do best, and Mythic was split away from them and given wings with which they flew so high and free. It was a time of great change and upheaval, but also a time of hope.

Mojang has more cash (that’s liquid cash, not tied up) than most of the bigger publishers out there. Minecraft is also still shifting units and bringing in more than is being spent on it. There is absolutely zero reason to sell.

I still think Minecraft is a graphically disfigured pointless exercise, but good on you Notch(although apparently 3+ Mill are still not enough to offer up MC unlimited in a HIB for a brief period, you greedy bastid) and FUUUU EA.

Okay… if Riccitello did ask Notch to sell his company (which he may or may not have), could somebody please explain me what exactly was he thinking? Is a CEO of a gigantic multinational corporation really so naive as to think he could buy Mojang for money, no matter how much? WIth approximately 40 or 50 million Euros, Notch has more money than he’d ever want to spend on himself, he dosen’t need any more cash! And i don’t think there’s anything that EA could give him besides cash. He dosen’t really strike me as a kind of person who wants to set a Guinness record for the most ludicrously overblown budget spent on a game.

Actually EA would love Minecraft so they can shove it onto Facebook/mobile and all that other social horseshit they are infecting PC Gaming with.

That said Origin is the future of gaming right?

Join the Steam ‘EA Boycott Origin’ Group. Fight the power and bring BF3 / Dragon Age 2 / Crysis 3 / Mass Effect 3 and every other new EA game back to Steam. We are small but with your help we can grow. We also boycott Tom Senior as well if that helps.

Thank goodness for indies as I don’t buy EA, Steam, or Sony games. I don’t think my actions will humble the giants – it’s just a personal point of honor. One day, perhaps, where giants have fallen, we can conquer.

I like EA because release good games and are not stupid. You can be evil, but if you produces something people want to play, you still wins. People like Ubisoft are so focused on making everyone life a pain, that activatelly make undesirable to buy his games.

“Notch has stated that EA made no direct offer” in the article. There’s a huge amount of reading between the lines here. For no ration reason I suspect the conclusions are true.

When the CEO of a major AAA title publisher shows up at your door they are either there to buy hookers and blow or are out to buy new IP to destroy. They have personal slaves to handle all other transactions.

I like the manufactured rage at anything any site says about Mojang. It’s the ultimate hipster move. Hipsters pushed and pushed Minecraft like a pregger giving birth. Then after Minecraft is more or less hitting the mainstream, the hipsters turn around and blast the game and anyone who talks about it, because now the hipster thing isn’t pushing Minecraft, it’s acting “too cool” for it.

I think Notch should keep Minecraft and any/all other gaming related properties both now and forevermore to himself, but sell the IP of his own, personal story to EA.They could make a game about how he made a great little game that kicks total awesomeassness; it’d be like a 3D platformer or something where you try to put all the pieces of a game together without being eaten by a giant, undead monster.

Then you could unlock the Minecraft-clone mini game inside NotchCraft and everything would explode in a volcano of copyright lava.

So how long now you think before EA pays some of their underlings to pretty much exactly copy minecraft with better graphics, a modified color scheme, a slightly different title, and 1 count ’em ONE new feature tacked on to avoid lawsuits and corners the market?